Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXXIII
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXXIII.
For when they have heard from us something to this effect—that
when the mortal passes into life it follows necessarily that, as that
first birth leads only to the existence of mortality, another birth
should be discovered, a birth which neither begins nor ends with
corruption, but one which conducts the person begotten to an immortal
existence, in order that, as what is begotten of a mortal birth has
necessarily a mortal subsistence, so from a birth which admits not
corruption that which is born may be superior to the corruption of
death; when, I say, they have heard this and the like from us, and are
besides instructed as to the process,—namely that it is prayer
and the invocation of heavenly grace, and water, and faith, by which
the mystery of regeneration is accomplished,—they still remain
incredulous and have an eye only for the outward and visible, as if
that which is operated corporeally2020
| 2020 σωματικῶς: with a general reference both to the recipient, the words
(the “form”), and the water (the “matter,” in
the Aristotelian sense). Cf. questions in Private Baptism of
Infants: and Hampden’s Bampton Lectures, p. 336
n. | concurred not
with the fulfilment of God’s promise. How, they ask, can prayer
and the invocation of Divine power over the water be the foundation of
life in those who have been thus initiated? In reply to them, unless
they be of a very obstinate disposition, one single consideration
suffices to bring them to an acquiescence in our doctrine. For let us
in our turn ask them about that process of the carnal generation which
every one can notice. How does that something which is cast for the
beginnings of the formation of a living being become a Man? In that
case, most certainly, there is no method whatever that can discover for
us, by any possible reasoning, even the probable truth. For what
correlation is there between the definition of man and the quality
observable in that something? Man, when once he is put together, is a
reasoning and intellectual being, capable of thought and knowledge; but
that something is to be observed only in its quality of humidity, and
the mind grasps nothing in it beyond that which is seen by the sense of
sight. The reply, therefore, which we might expect to receive from
those whom we questioned as to how it is credible that a man is
compounded from that humid element, is the very reply which we make
when questioned about the regeneration that takes place through the
water. Now in that other case any one so questioned has this reply
ready at hand, that that element becomes a man by a Divine power,
wanting which, the element is motionless and inoperative. If,
therefore, in that instance the subordinate matter does not make the
man, but the Divine power changes that visible thing into a man’s
nature, it would be utterly unfair for them, when in the one case they
testify to such power in God, in this other department to suppose that
the Deity is too weak to accomplish His will. What is there common,
they ask, between water and life? What is there common, we ask them in
return, between humidity and God’s image? In that case there is
no paradox if, God so willing, what is humid changes into the most rare
creature2021
| 2021 τιμιώτατον
(τιμὴ =
“price”) ζῶον. So Plato,
Laws, p. 766: “Man, getting right training and a happy
organization, is wont to become a most godlike and cultivated
creature.” | . Equally, then, in this case we assert
that there is nothing strange when the presence of a Divine influence
transforms what is born with a corruptible nature into a state of
incorruption.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
